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guidetourme · 2 years

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Top 10 American Roadtrip Destinations

Top 10 American Roadtrip Destinations American Roadtrip Destinations: One of the most quintessential aspects of American culture is the classic road trip. For decades, families have piled into an RV or automotive for a grand adventure across the nation – and for good reason! America is teeming with hundreds of trails and roadways, many of which hold a great deal of historical significance. The…

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#American Roadtrip Destinations #California State Route 1 #Historic National Road #Road Trip #Roadtrip Destinations

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mountrainiernps · 2 months

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NPS Photo of Mount Rainier with a portion of Mowich Lake Road viewed from Tolmie Peak in 1961 (Eunice Lake is in the foreground with Mowich Lake in the distance).

Mowich Lake Road, like other park roads, was initially planned as part of an “around-the-mountain” road system. Mowich Lake Road starts in the northwest corner of the park and was intended to connect to Westside Road, which starts from the southwest corner. The two roads were never completed due to budget constraints and the rugged topography of the mountain. Constructed from 1929-1934, Mowich Lake Road remains a six-mile long spur road (reached via SR165) and is a discontiguous portion of the Mount Rainier National Historic District. Original features along the road include one stone retaining wall and 39 rustic culverts with mortared stone headwalls.

Mount Rainier National Park Archives Photo of the Mowich Entrance Dedication in 1933.

Mowich Lake Road was dedicated in 1933 at the Mowich Lake Entrance (now at Paul Peak Trailhead). At the dedication, a log memorial was constructed in honor of Dr. William Fraser Tolmie who visited Mount Rainier a hundred years earlier in 1833 on a botanizing trip. The log memorial was intended to be incorporated into an entrance arch. The arch was never completed and the memorial no longer exists. Footage of the Mowich Lake Road dedication event can be viewed at: https://go.nps.gov/MMem-MowichDedication

NPS Photo of the current Mowich Lake Road Entrance at Paul Peak Trailhead, 8/17/23.

While dedicated in 1933, delays due to construction and then WWII limited access and Mowich Lake Road did not open to vehicle traffic until July 1955. Have you traveled the historic Mowich Lake Road?

#Historic Mount Rainier #mount rainier national park #Mowich Lake #Mowich Lake Road #Paul Peak #Paul Peak Trailhead #historic road #national historic landmark district #history

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rabbitcruiser · 7 months

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Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence on October 14, 1964.

#Martin Luther King Jr #Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park #Atlanta #Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change #14 October 1964 #anniversary #Nobel Peace Prize #civil rights movement #US history #USA #Georgia #original photography #summer 2016 #Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church #Freedom Road #architecture #cityscape #tourist attraction #landmark

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vandaliatraveler · 2 years

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Icons of the National Road, Part 5. Fort Necessity National Battlefield commemorates the site of one of the earliest battles of the French and Indian War. Shortly after ambushing a French expedition led by Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville at a nearby mountain glen, Colonel George Washington ordered his Colonial militia to construct a “fort” - little more than a stockade surrounded by breastworks - at Great Meadows in anticipation of an attack by the French. Sure enough, on July 3, 1754, Jumonville’s older brother, Louis Coulon de Villiers, led a French and Native American force in an assault on the fort, which was defended by the Colonial militia and small number of British regulars under Washington's command. After a day-long battle in the rain, Washington was compelled to surrender and sign a confession admitting to Jumonville’s assassination. It was the first and last time in his career he would surrender to the enemy.

In addition to a reconstruction of the fort and its earthworks, the park includes a visitor center with a museum, the Mount Washington Tavern, General Edward Braddock’s gravesite, and Jumonville Glen.

#appalachia #vandalia #pennsylvania #the national road #us route 40 #laurel highlands #allegheny mountains #human history #historical sites #battlefield #fort necessity national battlefield #french and indian war #george washington #mount washington tavern #caulophyllum giganteum #giant blue cohosh #houstonia caerulea #azure bluets

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travelernight · 11 days

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South Africa’s Winelands: Experiencing the Best Vines and Views

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tempest-melody · 11 months

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I love to travel but not every place is beautiful. Some places are beautiful but they have dark pasta. This video dives into Amache, one of the Japanese Interment Camps, an American Concentration Camp and the injustice done there.

#colorado #Amache #internment camps #concentration camp #WWII #us history #American history #dark history #National historic site #Japanese American internment #pearl harbor #pacific theater #Japanese American history #japanese americans #travel blogger #road trip #Youtube

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supertrainstationh · 1 year

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Long Island; Greenport NY; 7/28/88 by Steve Barry Via Flickr: Long Island Hashamomuck Pond, Greenport, New York July 28, 1988 Long Island Rail Road "power pack" 607 leads a westbound train across Hashamomuck Pond just outside Greenport. The red stripes on the coaches indicate these are parlor cars; this was an excursion for the National Railway Historical Society convention and was an all-parlor car train. The 607 was built as Western Maryland FA-1 303; the LIRR removed its traction motors so it provides only power for the coaches and serves as a cab car.

All red stripes makes this look like a weird Metro North scene.

These coaches and the converted locomotive were probably on their last paint job here.

They would all be retired a tad over a decade after this.

#cab car #New York #bridge #Long Island #National Railway Historical Society #607 #LIRR #Long Island Rail Road #NRHS #Southold #United States #flickr #trainspam

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haylanmakesstuff · 2 years

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Day 31-32

We were supposed to be in North Cascades National Park the rest of the week, but we packed up this morning and headed to the coast. We found an open campsite available at Bay View State Park, right on the coast but still in the trees. On the drive there, we made quick stops by several state parks just to see what they are like (Can you believe the year pass for Washington State Parks is just $30 for over 150 parks???). We spent the most time sitting on the banks of the beautifully blue and chilly Skagit river, on a shady beach. I could have just melted into the sand and stayed there for eternity. I am feeling better than yesterday, but still off.

Also, I had lunch on GRASS. Yes, ready yourself for another soliloquy about GRASS. So soft. So cold. So clean. Smells so good. Here I am fully enjoying it:

We made a stop right down the road from our site at the Padilla Bay Aquarium and Research Center. We are careful about what aquariums and zoos we support, as so many are terrible, only-for-profit businesses that should strictly be avoided (I’m looking at you, Austin Aquarium), and this one checked out. The volunteers were super friendly, and their exhibits were wonderfully interactive for all ages. Their small living aquarium section is filled to the brim with endemic, native species found on the reserve the aquarium is on the shores of. We learned all kinds of things (including a skate egg case, which was totally foreign to me) thanks to the excellent volunteer work of Ann. I really enjoyed watching the little octopus, especially when I showed him to himself on my phone. He literally did a double take and bobbed his head around trying to get a better look.

Here, I earned something akin to a Junior Ranger Badge! This one is dedicated to Nick; thanks for your enduring friendship, your stellar sense of humor, our shared love of Indian food, and introducing me to your lovely now-wife. Also, for your cats. This may be a strange thing to say, but I absolutely adore your cats and want to stare at pictures of them if I can’t stare into their amazing, perfect eyeballs. Thanks for helping out my fundraiser! I don’t have a picture of this patch, so here is a picture of me pretending to be Husband. “Look at me, I have to wear this sun-shirt or I burn to a crispy tomato, I eat cookies before breakfast, and love to watch pimple popping videos. I think every feral cat is a cougar and had to wear socks with sandles while on vacation because I fell off my skateboard while wearing flip flops!”

We gorged ourselves at our campsite on surprisingly authentic Irish food from down the road, especially since Husband ordered two pieces of pie without realizing that equaled half the pie. We had pie for breakfast the next day. And some for lunch the next day. It was a lot of pie, but there is never too much pie. Good choice, Husband!

In the morning we got up bright and early to catch the very first ferry, only to get there and find out one of the boats is down so we have to wait a few hours. We had a strange but delicious breakfast in Ana Cortes, and caught the late ferry to San Juan Island across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We were getting a late start due to the ferry delay, so we decided to rent scooters so we wouldn’t have to wait on the shuttle service that’s known to be slow.

This sounded like a good idea at the time, and should have been. We were checking in with a family that had no idea what they were doing, and bullied their way to the first scooters to leave, even though they knew we had 16 years of riding experience each. Ok, so what, I’m patient. Long story short, they couldn’t even pass the test to be able to go out on the road safely and we had to just stand there in the sun the whole time waiting. Bah! I digress. When we got out scooters, we headed out and it was easy to forget the annoying parts of the morning. For one, it felt great not having to walk anywhere. Also, it’s endearing to see Husband riding his scooter with my cane strapped to his backpack. Three, I just really love riding. It’s such a fancy-free feeling, like everything is just beautiful and you can smell all the smells, and see all the sights, feel all the feels.

Our first stop was the place we wanted to see most, San Juan Islands National Historical Park. Since the first National Park we both volunteered at in Hawai’i was a National Historic Park, (Kaloko-Honokohau) have a soft spot for these sites that are often neglected by tourists, especially when they are on the furthest southern tip of a hard to get to island, away from all the ice cream stands and crab cakes.

The staff and volunteers here were great, and we did a short trail that was cane-accessible to see some of the historic buildings and learn about the Pig Wars, where an American soldier shot an English soldier’s pig because he ate his potatoes; the rest was history and an example how wars and conflicts can be solved without resorting to violence. Although the pig may not agree.

We earned our Junior Ranger Badge here! This felt like a special one since it’s a hard to get to place. This badge is dedicated to Kathy W! Thank you for donating. I remember the very first time I met you, in a job interview. You noted I had a good job when I was still in high school and asked why I had left. I decided to give a fully honest answer: The boss was bringing in 16-year-old girls and they were doing cocaine off his desk. I walked out that day. You looked surprised, I mean, who wouldn’t be? You asked, “well, if that were to happen here, would you walk out?” and I didn’t hesitate, “Yes, yes I would walk out.” I knew that answer was a risky one, but I am honest if nothing. You hired me, and I got to spend the next four years working with you and the most devoted and wonderful people, putting out good into the world. What more could one ask for? Thank you for all of your kindness and opportunity, that clearly still resonates today.

Leaving the park, we got quick deli sandwiches (holy moly these were good!) and ate them on a strange Sesame Street-like staircase in an ally that went nowhere. We scooted to Lime Kiln State Park, a hot spot to watch the resident Orca Whales just off the coastline. Terrible news though; just five days prior, there was a 2,600-gallon spill of diesel just up the coast. The park worker who mans the viewpoint said that the orcas stopped sharp well down the coast from it. Lingered a moment and headed straight out to sea. No one has seen any sign of them since. They knew something was wrong and ran for the horizon. Very sad that these animals have to contend with our frightful mistakes.

We took the ferry back to the mainland and crashed. Husband is the sweetest, most kind person, because he has been volunteering to sleep in the tent instead of the camper since his unfortunate olfactory has been stoking my insomnia. I feel terrible he had to do it, but I feel pretty great getting some actual sleep. Thank you for your sacrifice!

Haylan

#san juan islands #san juan #san juan island national historical park #national historical park #washington #junior ranger #traveling with chronic illness #ehlers danlos awareness #hypermobility #scooters #scooter #scoot #genuine buddy #road trip for a cause

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wilwheaton · 4 months

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Donald Trump is on the verge of becoming the GOP nominee for the presidency for the third straight election. What might have seemed like a historical blip in 2016 that was remedied by Trump’s general election defeat in 2020 is now an eternal black mark on the Republican Party. Hijacked by Trump, purged of its traditional middle-of-the-road corporate conservatives, and transformed into a cult of personality, the Republican Party is unrecognizable as the party of Lincoln. Gone are the Bushes, Cheneys, and Romneys. In are the worst group of scoundrels, hacks, hangers-on, and would-be authoritarians this nation has ever seen. Whatever quaint and out-dated notions remained that Iowa’s Midwestern conservatism and its rural and highly educated populace would serve as an important early filter in the nominating process can be put to rest. A majority of Iowa Republican caucus-goers went for Trump after the travesties of the Trump presidency: the failed response to the COVID pandemic, the indignity of losing to Joe Biden, and the insurrection at the Capitol, among so many others.

Iowa GOP Embraces Insurrectionist For POTUS

Racist losers choose racist loser to represent the party of racist losers.

Also, just to keep some perspective: Shitler “won” by getting about 44,000 people in one state, known for its high concentration of white supremacist christians.

Don’t be fooled by media that this is some kind of meaningful comeback for him. He’s still a criminal, he’s still a liar and a conman. He’s still going to prison for the rest of his life. This is not his political comeback. This is forty thousand pieces of shit in a nation of around 340 million people who overwhelmingly despise him.

Stay vigilant. Get out the vote. Don’t get complacent, but don’t be fooled by a “comeback” narrative that horserace-driven media needs to sell advertising.

#fuck trump #republicans are garbage

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provider-of-guardians · 2 months

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Look look look, before anyone gets mad.. I just wanted to gush about road trips lol (Also please reblog to help this post break containment!)

#polls #america #I feel like I might get blasted for this but let’s see #provider of ramblings

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reasonsforhope · 6 days

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"Construction of the “largest wildlife crossing in the world” passed a significant milestone in April placing the first girders over an 8-lane freeway near Los Angeles to preserve the local mountain lion population.

After years of tireless work, erecting the first horizontal section of the 210-foot-long crossing was an historic moment for the National Wildlife Federation, the Caltrans highway department, and many private and public partners.

“We all cheered when the crane lowered the first concrete beam across the freeway, as we truly saw the bridge starting to take shape,” said an excited Beth Pratt, the California Executive Director of National Wildlife Federation.

“This structure is a testament to us all wanting a future for wildlife and mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains.”

Moving forward, up to 82 additional concrete girders will be placed, with each beam weighing between 126 and 140 tons. As these critical horizontal supports are placed, the structure will ultimately reconnect two long fractured global biodiversity hotspots in the Southern California region—providing safe passage for not only the cougars, but bobcats, deer, lizards, and coyotes, as they move between the Santa Monica Mountains and the Simi Hills of the Santa Susana mountain range.

[Note: The setting looks pretty rural in that rendering, but the wildlife crossing is actually only five minutes from the Los Angeles city border and the densely populated San Fernando Valley.]

For drivers on the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills, the construction is interrupting traffic from 11:00 PM to 4:00 AM on one side of the highway each week (Northbound or Southbound). The FAQs can be found here.

CBS news estimates about 1,500 of these wildlife passages have been built both over and under major highways and rural roads across America.

Watch CBS’s recent feature that highlights crossings over America’s longest highway, US 90, which runs across the northern states, and how a new US grant program is paving the way for more crossings…"

-via Good News Network, May 9, 2024

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-video via CBS Sunday Morning, April 21, 2024

#wildlife crossings #wildlife #wildlife conservation #conservation #ecosystems #los angeles #california #santa monica #conservation news #endangered species #mountain lion #united states #good news #hope #Youtube

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mountrainiernps · 3 months

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Mount Rainier National Park Archives Photo courtesy Richardson Paul Album of the Paradise Road near Ricksecker Point circa 1910.

Between Longmire and Paradise is a short one-way scenic road called Ricksecker Point Road. First built from 1904-1915, this part of the road is an older section of the Nisqually-Paradise Road and was considered one of the most dangerous stretches. It was narrow, bordered by steep cliffs, and prone to rockfall. Over the years the road was widened, resurfaced, and parking was included at viewpoints. A detour constructed in the 1930s replaced the original route and became the main Paradise Road, while Ricksecker Point Road was left as a scenic bypass. Ricksecker Point is named for Eugene Ricksecker, an Army Corps of Engineers supervisor who surveyed the route to Paradise in 1904. The survey team originally named the feature “Gap Point”, but it was renamed after a road was constructed in 1909.

Ricksecker Point Road, also called Ricksecker Overlook, is a contributing structure in the Mount Rainier Historic Landmark District. Have you driven or stopped along this scenic road during the summer?

NPS Photo from Ricksecker Point Road in 2018. The forested, rocky ridge in front of Mount Rainier in both photos is called Cushman Crest.

#mount rainier national park #Historic Mount Rainier #Ricksecker Point #Ricksecker Overlook #history #historic road #road #Cushman Crest #Paradise Road

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rabbitcruiser · 1 year

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Grand Mesa National Forest, CO (No. 9)

Colorado is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains.

The region has been inhabited by Native Americans and their ancestors for at least 13,500 years and possibly much longer. The eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains was a major migration route for early peoples who spread throughout the Americas. "Colorado" is the Spanish adjective meaning "red", the color of the Fountain Formation outcroppings found up and down the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28, 1861, and on August 1, 1876, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed Proclamation 230 admitting Colorado to the Union as the 38th state. Colorado is nicknamed the "Centennial State" because it became a state one century (and four weeks) after the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence.

Source: WIkipedia

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metamorphesque · 16 days

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BRIEFLY ABOUT WHAT'S HAPPENING IN ARMENIA

The present government of Armenia, under the leadership of the infamous madman Nikol Pashinyan, has made the decision to cede some Armenian territory to Azerbaijan, a neighboring country that has relentlessly waged war against Armenia for decades, leaving scars of loss and anguish in its wake. On April 19, the Armenian and Azerbaijani border demarcation commissions agreed to initiate border demarcation proceedings starting from the Tavush region. The delineation of the border sections will be based on coordinates clarified through geodetic measurements on-site, with completion expected by May 15th, 2024. Representatives of the Armenian Prime Minister announced that, as a consequence, Azerbaijan would gain control over 2.5 villages, purportedly leading to a reduction in security risks for the Republic of Armenia. This decision has been likened to extending a hand to a voracious beast in the hope that it will miraculously abandon its predatory instincts and refrain from further aggression. Those familiar with the historical tensions between these nations recognize this as the initial step toward Armenia's capitulation. Since April 19, residents of Tavush border villages, supported by demonstrators from across the country, have been staging protests along the Armenia-Georgia interstate road. Despite these protests, 35 border posts have already been erected along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. Opponents of the border delimitation, led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, head of the Diocese of Tavush, are marching from Kirants—one of the affected villages—to Yerevan in an attempt to halt the border demarcation process. Archbishop Bagrat Sacrosanct previously declared that the movement would reach Yerevan by the afternoon of May 9, where they will present specific demands to the government. The participants demand an end to the concessionary policy and unilateral concessions endorsed by the government, which will, without a shadow of a doubt, endanger the safety of Armenians and Armenia as an independent country. Hence, every single one of us needs to be politically conscious. Who knows? Perhaps one day your leader, too, will decide to sell parts of your country to your enemy.

#and this is just the tip of the iceberg #armenia #news #world news #tavush #tavush province #armenian history #reporting from yerevan #armenian genocide

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batboyblog · 4 days

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Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #18

May 10-17 2024

The Justice Department endorses lifting many restrictions on marijuana. Since the 1970s marijuana has been classified as a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive classification for drugs that are highly addictive, dangerous and have no medical use, like heroin. Schedule I drugs are nearly impossible to get approval for research studies greatly hampering attempts to understand marijuana and any medical benefits it may have. The DoJ recommends moving it to Schedule III, drugs with low risk of abuse like anabolic steroids, and testosterone. This will allow for greater research, likely allow medical marijuana, and make marijuana a much less serious offense. President Biden welcomed DoJ's decision, a result a review of policy he ordered. Biden in his message talked about how he's pardoned everyone convicted of marijuana possession federally. The President repeated a phrase he's said many times "No-one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana,"

The Department of Interior announced no new coal mining in America's largest coal producing region. The moratorium on new coal leases has been hailed as the single biggest step so fair toward ending coal in the US. The Powder River Basin area of Wyoming and Montana produces 40% of the nations coal, the whole state of West Virginia is just 14%. The new rule is estimated to reduce emissions by the equivalent of 293 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, the same as taking 63 million gas powered cars off the road.

Vice-President Harris announced that the Biden-Harris Administration had broken records by investing $16 billion in Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Harris, a graduate of Howard University, is the first President or Vice-President to have gone to a HBCU. The Administration's investment of $900 million so far in 2024 brought the total investment of the Biden-Harris administration in HBCUs to $16 billion more than double the record $7 billion. HBCUs produce 40% of black engineers, 50% of black teachers, 70% of black doctors and dentists, and 80% of black judges. HBCUs also have a much better record of helping social mobility and moving people out of generational poverty than other colleges and universities.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $30 billion dollars in renewal funding for the Housing Choice Voucher Program. The program supports 2.3 million families that are in need of housing with vouchers that help pay rent. This funding represents a $2 billion dollar increase over last year.

The Department of Agriculture announced $671.4 million in investments in rural infrastructure. The money will go to project to improve rural electric grids, as well as drinking water and wastewater treatment infrastructure. The money will go to 47 projects across 23 states.

HUD announced a record breaking $1.1 billion dollar investment in Tribal housing and community development. HUD plans just over 1 billion dollars for the Indian Housing Block Grant (IHBG) program. This is a 40% increase in funding over 2023 and marks the largest ever funding investment in Indian housing. HUD also is investing $75 million in community development, supporting building and rehabbing community buildings in American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

The Department of Transportation announced $2 billion in investments in America's busiest passenger rail route, the Northeast Corridor between Washington DC and Boston. This is part of a 15 year, $176 billion plan to rebuild the corridor’s infrastructure and prepare for increased ridership and more trains. So far investments have seen a 25% increase, 7 million riders, over figures last year. a fully funded plan would almost double Amtrak service between New York City and Washington, D.C., and increase service between New York City and Boston by 50%. It would also allow a 60% increase in commuter trains.

HUD announced plans to streamline its HOME program. Currently the largest federal program to help build affordable housing, the streamlining of the rules will speed up building and help meet the Biden Administration's goal of 2 million new affordable housing units. HUD announced last week $1.3 billion dollars for the HOME program, which built 13,000 new units of housing in 2023 and helped 13,000 families with rental assistance

The Department of Interior announced $520 million in new water projects to help protect against drought in the western states. The funding will support 57 water related projects across 18 western states. The projects focus on climate resilience and drought prevention, as well as improving aging water delivery systems, and improving hydropower generation.

The Departments of Agriculture and HHS have stepped up efforts to wipe out the H5N1 virus prevent its spread to humans while protecting farmers livelihoods. The virus is currently effecting dairy cattle in the Texas panhandle region. The USDA and HSS are releasing wide ranging funds to help support farms equipping workers with Personal Protective Equipment, covering Veterinary costs, as well as compensating farmers for lost revenue. HHS and the CDC announced $101 million in testing an monitoring. This early detection and action is key to preventing another Covid style pandemic.

The Senate confirmed Sanket Bulsara to a life time federal judgeship in New York and Eric Schulte and Camela Theeler to lifetime federal judgeships in South Dakota. This brings the total number of judges appointed by President Biden to 197. For the first time in history the majority of a President's judicial nominees have not been white men.

Bonus: The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that transgender health insurance exclusions were illegal. The ruling came from a case first filed in 2019 where an employer refused to cover an employee's gender affirming surgery. The court in its ruling sited new guidance from the Biden Administration's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that declared that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects trans people in the work place. These kinds of guidelines are often sited in court and carry great weight.

#Thanks Biden #Joe Biden #democrats #american politics #marijuana #marijuana legalization #climate change #climate action #HBCU #howard university #affordable homes #native american #Trans rights #judges #h5n1

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months

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Uncle Sam paid to develop a cancer drug and now one guy will get to charge whatever he wants for it

Today (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. Tomorrow (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

The argument for pharma patents: making new medicines is expensive, and medicines are how we save ourselves from cancer and other diseases. Therefore, we will award government-backed monopolies – patents – to pharma companies so they will have an incentive to invest their shareholders' capital in research.

There's plenty wrong with this argument. For one thing, pharma companies use their monopoly winnings to sell drugs, not invent drugs. For every dollar pharma spends on research, it spends three dollars on marketing:

https://www.bu.edu/sph/files/2015/05/Pharmaceutical-Marketing-and-Research-Spending-APHA-21-Oct-01.pdf

And that "R&D" isn't what you're thinking of, either. Most R&D spending goes to "evergreening" – coming up with minor variations on existing drugs in a bid to extend those patents for years or decades:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680578/

Evergreening got a lot of attention recently when John Green rained down righteous fire upon Johnson & Johnson for their sneaky tricks to prevent poor people from accessing affordable TB meds, prompting this excellent explainer from the Arm and A Leg Podcast:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/john-green-part-1/

Another thing those monopoly profits are useful for: "pay for delay," where pharma companies bribe generic manufacturers not to make cheap versions of drugs whose patents have expired. Sure, it's illegal, but that doesn't stop 'em:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/competition-enforcement/pay-delay

But it's their money, right? If they want to spend it on bribes or evergreening or marketing, at least some of that money is going into drugs that'll keep you and the people you love from enduring unimaginable pain or dying slowly and hard. Surely that warrants a patent.

Let's say it does. But what about when a pharma company gets a patent on a life-saving drug that the public paid to develop, test and refine? Publicly funded work is presumptively in the public domain, from NASA R&D to the photos that park rangers shoot of our national parks. The public pays to produce this work, so it should belong to the public, right?

That was the deal – until Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. Under Bayh-Dole, government-funded inventions are given away – to for-profit corporations, who get to charge us whatever they want to access the things we paid to make. The basis for this is a racist hoax called "The Tragedy Of the Commons," written by the eugenicist white supremacist Garrett Hardin and published by Science in 1968:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/01/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-how-ecofascism-was-smuggled-into-mainstream-thought/

Hardin invented an imaginary history in which "commons" – things owned and shared by a community – are inevitably overrun by selfish assholes, a fact that prompts nice people to also overrun these commons, so as to get some value out of them before they are gobbled up by people who read Garrett Hardin essays.

Hardin asserted this as a historical fact, but he cited no instances in which it happened. But when the Nobel-winning Elinor Ostrom actually went and looked at how commons are managed, she found that they are robust and stable over long time periods, and are a supremely efficient way of managing resources:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

The reason Hardin invented an imaginary history of tragic commons was to justify enclosure: moving things that the public owned and used freely into private ownership. Or, to put it more bluntly, Hardin invented a pseudoscientific justification for giving away parks, roads and schools to rich people and letting them charge us to use them.

To arrive at this fantasy, Hardin deployed one of the most important analytical tools of modern economics: introspection. As Ely Devons put it: "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’"

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

Hardin's hoax swept from the fringes to the center and became received wisdom – so much so that by 1980, Senators Birch Bayh and Bob Dole were able to pass a law that gave away publicly funded medicine to private firms, because otherwise these inventions would be "overgrazed" by greedy people, denying the public access to livesaving drugs.

On September 21, the NIH quietly published an announcement of one of these pharmaceutical transfers, buried in a list of 31 patent assignments in the Federal Register:

https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2023-20487.pdf

The transfer in question is a patent for using T-cell receptors (TCRs) to treat solid tumors from HPV, one of the only patents for treating solid tumors with TCRs. The beneficiary of this transfer is Scarlet TCR, a Delaware company with no website or SEC filings and ownership shrouded in mystery:

https://www.bizapedia.com/de/scarlet-tcr-inc.html

One person who pays attention to this sort of thing is James Love, co-founder of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit that has worked for decades for access to medicines. Love sleuthed out at least one person behind Scarlet TCR: Christian Hinrichs, a researcher at Rutgers who used to work at the NIH's National Cancer Institute:

https://www.nih.gov/research-training/lasker-clinical-research-scholars/tenured-former-scholars

Love presumes Hinrichs is the owner of Scarlet TCR, but neither the NIH nor Scarlet TCR nor Hinrichs will confirm it. Hinrichs was one of the publicly-funded researchers who worked on the new TCR therapy, for which he received a salary.

This new drug was paid for out of the public purse. The basic R&D – salaries for Hinrichs and his collaborators, as well as funding for their facilities – came out of NIH grants. So did the funding for the initial Phase I trial, and the ongoing large Phase II trial.

As David Dayen writes in The American Prospect, the proposed patent transfer will make Hinrichs a very wealthy man (Love calls it "generational wealth"):

https://prospect.org/health/2023-10-18-nih-how-to-become-billionaire-program/

This wealth will come by charging us – the public – to access a drug that we paid to produce. The public took all the risks to develop this drug, and Hinrichs stands to become a billionaire by reaping the rewards – rewards that will come by extracting fortunes from terrified people who don't want to die from tumors that are eating them alive.

The transfer of this patent is indefensible. The government isn't even waiting until the Phase II trials are complete to hand over our commonly owned science.

But there's still time. The NIH is about to get a new director, Monica Bertagnolli – Hinrichs's former boss – who will need to go before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for confirmation. Love is hoping that the confirmation hearing will present an opportunity to question Bertagnolli about the transfer – specifically, why the drug isn't being nonexclusively licensed to lots of drug companies who will have to compete to sell the cheapest possible version.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/19/solid-tumors/#t-cell-receptors

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

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